stop so much money in this country, which must return again to the planters' hands as long as traders eat."

Duties of encouragement, let me observe in passing, he calls "restrictions on the British trade." Sir, the name of the writer of this paper is unknown to me. And yet, when I compare the spirit, the sagacity, the American feeling which mark his matter with the language and the policy of later days, and more famous names, I can hardly forbear to exclaim of his humble and forgotten speculation

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That strain I heard was of an higher mood."

I must hurry away from the accumulations of proof before me, which bear on the general subject; the formation of associations to encourage manufactures, the resolutions of the patriotic society of Richmond, of the ladies of Halifax in North Carolina, and of Hartford in Connecticut, and of the Legislature and Executive of Massachusetts, to effect this by individual and organized exertion, and all the other indications which break from the universal press of that stirring and anxious time, and which show you with how true an instinct the genius of America was turning itself to take hold on the golden key that opens the palace of national wealth and greatness-I must hurry from these to call your attention to some others more immediately applicable to the proposition which I am maintaining. Look, then, for a moment, into an address by a Jerseyman," in November, 1787, to the citizens of New Jersey, on the new Constitution. Hear him, one of the people, appealing to the people with the open book in his hand, speaking the language of the people-hear him on the clause which you are attempting to interpret:

"The great advantages [American Museum, Vol. II., page 437], which would be the result of the adoption of the proposed Constitution, are almost innumerable. I will mention a few among the many. In the first place, the proper regulation of our commerce would be insured-the imposts on all foreign merchandise imported into America would still effectually aid our continental treasury. This power has been heretofore held back by some States on narrow and mistaken principles. The amount of the duties since the peace would probably, by this time, have nearly paid our national debt. By the proper regulation of our commerce our own manufactures would be also much promoted and encouraged. Heavy duties would discourage the consumption of articles of foreign growth. This would induce us

more to work up our raw materials, and prevent European manufacturers from dragging them from us, in order to bestow upon them their own labor and a high price before they are returned into our hands."

Just then, too, a Pennsylvania patriot, under the signature of "One of the People," was making a similar appeal to the intelligence of that great State on behalf of the new Constitution. And how does he interpret this grant of power?

"The people of Pennsylvania, in general, are composed of men of three occupations-the farmer, the merchant, the mechanic. The interests of these three are intimately blended together. A government, then, which will be conducive to their happiness, and best promote their interest, is the government which these people should adopt. The Constitution now presented to them is such a one. Every person must long since have discovered the necessity of placing the exclusive power of regulating the commerce of America in the same body; without this it is impossible to regulate their trade. The same imposts, duties, and customs must equally prevail over the whole, for no one State can carry into effect its impost laws. A neighboring State could always prevent it. No State could effectually encourage its manufactories-there can be no navigation act. Whence comes it that the trade of this State, which abounds with materials for ship-building, is carried on in foreign bottoms? Whence comes it that shoes, boots, made-up clothes, hats, nails, sheet-iron, hinges, and all other utensils of iron, are of British manufacture? Whence comes it that Spain can regulate our flour market? These evils proceed from a want of one supreme controlling power in these States. They will be all done away by adopting the present form of government. It will have energy and power to regulate your trade and commerce-to enforce the execution of your imposts, duties, and customs. Instead of the trade of this country being carried on in foreign bottoms, our ports will be crowded with our own ships and we shall become the carriers of Europe. Heavy duties will be laid on all foreign articles which can be manufactured in this country, and bounties will be granted on the exportation of our commodities; the manufactories of our country will flourish; our mechanics will lift up their heads, and rise to opulence and wealth."

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And a little after this, in July, 1788, I find a Bostonian [American Museum, Vol. IV., page 331] advising duties on English importations, under the name of regulations and restrictions of trade for the encouragement of our own manufactures.

"The ill policy of our commercial arrangements has served to impoverish us in our finances, by the enormous remittances of our currency, occasioned an almost general bankruptcy, and has had the pernicious tendency to discourage our enterprise in manufactures, and ruined many of those branches which, during the war, had arisen to a flourishing

state."-"Our trade with that nation has been the principle source of all our misfortunes. It has thrown a number of our best estates into the hands of British merchants, has occasioned a most rapid decrease of our medium, has ruined our manufactures, and will, if pursued, sap the foundation of the best government that ever can be established in America. The first object, therefore, of the Federal Government must be to restrain our connection with Great Britain, unless on terms of reciprocity. While they continue their duties and prohibitions, we must lay similar restrictions and embarrassments on their trade, and prevent, by excessive duties, the redundance of their manufactures."

Some time in the year 1783 or 1784, there were published in a Virginia newspaper, "Reflections on the policy and necessity of encouraging the commerce of the citizens of the United States," by St. George Tucker, of Petersburg. They are written with great vigor, good sense, and a true national spirit, and present a powerful argument for a discrimination in favor of American tonnage. Toward the close of the essay (page 274 of the 2d vol. of the American Museum), he adverts to another subject in the following terms:

"Before I conclude, let me call the attention of my reader for a moment to the debt due from America to the subjects of Great Britain, which I have heard estimated at four or five millions of pounds. This debt was accumulated from a balance in trade annually accruing to Great Britain from the causes herein before pointed out. That trade must be destructive where such a balance continually arises against us. Surely it is proper to guard against such an event in future. This might be effected, in part, perhaps, by laying heavy duties, if not actual prohibitions, on the importation of such articles as are the produce of the United States. Is it not surprising, for example, that bar-iron, lead, saltpetre, leather, train-oil, soap, malt liquors, butter, beef, pork, and potatoes, should constitute a part of the annual imports from Europe to America?"

Did not this writer understand that legislation, for the purpose of turning the balance of trade in our favor, was a "regulation of trade," and is not the protecting tariff which he recommends exactly an instance of such legislation?

I spare you, sir, the infliction of more of these superfluous proofs. And yet the nature of the fact to be proved-that a whole people, a whole generation of our fathers, had in view, as one grand end and purpose of their new government, the acquisition of the means of restraining, by governmental action, the importation of foreign manufactures, for the encouragement of

manufactures and of all labor at home, and desired and meant to do this by clothing the new government with this specific power of regulating commerce-required and justified a pretty wide collection and display of their opinions, sufferings, expectations, and vocabulary, from sources the most numerous and the most scattered.

And now from the bosom of the people holding these opinions, oppressed by these incommodities, nourishing these hopes, determined on this relief, and speaking this language, arose the Constitution, immortal, unchangeable! In fulfillment of these hopes, it embodied the great governmental instrumentality which had been determined on, in the exact language which more than twenty years had made familiar. I say, then, sir, that when the country called the convention together which formed the Constitution, it was the general design to confer the protecting power upon the new government; that the governmental power to regulate trade was generally understood to embrace the protecting power; and it was inserted in the Constitution exactly because that was its meaning.

I do not think, then, sir, that anybody will deny that, in the commercial, political, and general vocabulary of 1787, and of all the period back to 1764, a discriminating tariff—a tariff discriminating for the protection of domestic industry, was universally called a commercial regulation. Everybody will agree that if, at that time, it had been written or spoken that England, the States, or any other government upon earth, had the power to make a commercial regulation or to regulate commerce, it would have been universally understood (such was the settled form of speech) to include the power to make a strict protecting tariff, and that such a tariff would have been one of the most ordinary and most familiar acts in exercise of such power of regulation. But then it will be said that it does not follow that the same language means, in this Constitution, when applied to and asserted of this government, what it meant everywhere else, when applied to or asserted of any other government in the world. England, the States, under the power to regulate commerce, could make a strict and technical protecting tariff; Congress, under the same power, or rather, under the same exact form of expression-the same enunciation in terms of power-can do no such thing.

Sir, he who asserts this has the burden of proof heavily upon him. Independently altogether of the evidence which I have already presented, to show that the country looked directly to this power of regulating commerce as the precise power under and by which the new government was to tax or prohibit imports for the encouragement of manufactures; independently of that, when you admit, as you must, that, for more than twenty years before the Constitution was formed, this language was universally current in the colonies and States; that it had acquired, by force of circumstances, an unusually precise, definite, and wellunderstood sense; that it had all that time been employed to designate or to include a certain known governmental function; that when applied to England, the States, and all other governments, it had, in the understanding of everybody, embraced a certain species and exercise of power for a certain purpose—when you admit this, and then find it here in the Constitution of this government, employed to confer a power on it, must you not admit that the presumption is, that it is used in the sense which everybody had understood it so long to bear, when applied to other governments; neither larger nor narrower; that it means to include the same well-known function, and not to exclude it; that it means to communicate the same extent and the same purpose of power, and not less; the same in quantity, the same in object?